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Transformational Change

Inaugural Address by Governor Douglas_Jan 8_09

TO: UVM Staff

FROM: Daniel Mark Fogel, President

DATE: January 27, 2009

RE: A Call to Participation in
a Transformational Change Process

After extensive discussion over the course of the last two months with vice presidents, deans, Faculty Senate leaders, and the members of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, I have decided to initiate a process for developing no more than three options for academic restructuring designed to enhance student and faculty success and to increase the capacity of the University to achieve our long-held and collectively shaped aspirations, including those articulated in the University Vision and Mission and those formulated by the Strategic Plan Action Idea Working Groups last semester. On Thursday of this week, I will appoint a working group to make recommendations to me by March 15. The first document, "A Call for Participation in a Transformational Change Process," is an outline of the process I envision and of its rationale as well as a call for suggestions about how the working group might best be structured and for nominations (and self-nominations) by close of business this coming Wednesday of individuals to serve on it. I am writing to invite the staff of the University to join the group addressed in that memo in suggesting persons whom I should consider appointing to the working group. Professor Robert Pepperman Taylor, founding dean of the Honors College, has agreed to chair the group.

The second document, "Transforming UVM--The College Option," is a "thought piece" outlining one of the models for restructuring I will ask the working group to consider--placing all undergraduates in a single college under one dean--and also exemplifies the level of detail that I think we should look for in whatever alternative (and perhaps preferable) models the working group may recommend; as I say in the memo, we are looking not for detailed plans but for feasible concepts, with the understanding that later on we will develop details collaboratively. Many thanks to all of you who have participated with me in conversations about this potentially transformational initiative and to everyone for attention now to this call for participation in the process going forward. With confidence in a bright future for UVM.